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Americans for Prosperity Cheers Kansas’ Improved Tax Climate

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October 10, 2013

Topeka – Americans for Prosperity today was pleased with news that Kansas is ranked 20th in the non-partisan Tax Foundation’s annual State Business Tax Climate Index. The Sunflower State was previously ranked 26th in the annual index.

“It’s encouraging to see Kansas improving in rankings such as the Small Business Tax Climate Index,” said AFP-Kansas state director Jeff Glendening. “There has been much progress in recent years to start making the state of Kansas more competitive with other states; however, there is still work to be done.”

Glendening said Kansas must continue to reduce the individual and corporate income taxes in order to achieve higher levels of economic growth in our state, especially when compared to the corporate income tax rates of neighboring states

Missouri, Oklahoma and Colorado are ranked 7th, 12th and 21st, respectively, in terms of their corporate income tax rates while Kansas lags behind at 37th. And while the individual income tax rate in Kansas has been reduced, the state is still only ranked 17th in the Index.

The Index compares the states on over 100 different variables in the five important areas of taxation (major business taxes, individual income taxes, sales taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and property taxes) and then adding the results up to a final, overall ranking. This approach rewards states on particularly strong aspects of their tax systems (or penalizing them on particularly weak aspects) while also measuring the general competitiveness of their overall tax systems. The result is a score that can be compared to other states’ scores. Ultimately, the top ten states in order are – Wyoming, South Dakota, Nevada, Alaska, Florida, Washington, Montana, New Hampshire, Utah and Indiana. Seven of the top ten states do not have a personal income tax. Three (Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming) do not have a corporate income tax either.